Operation Patriot Support

our first real step in doing something more than personal donations, we reached out to a well-recognized national organization to see what we could do on a local level and after several attempts with no response were a bit frustrated; then Pete met our other OPs Board Member Kevin Kenney – himself a retired Army helo pilot who now flies a Life Flight helicopter.  Kevin was then, and remains, the Sarasota, Florida representative for Operation Second Chance (operationsecondchance.org) – a fantastic organization that has been helping our veterans for years.  Pete asked Kevin how we could get involved and Kevin said “…consider yourself involved…”  This was the beginning of our starting to take veterans on fishing trips/hunts/outings which lead to our organizing the Florida Fun Shoot (FFS) in 2013 with our first event taking place in spring 2014.  The first two Florida Fun Shoots were thru the Operation Second Chance 501c3 where we were able to clear about $75,000 for OSC with a portion going to another Tampa based organization – Black Dagger Military Hunt Club (blackdaggermhc.org), and a specialized campaign The Mike Day Tri-Challenge.  Operation Second Chance was very supportive of all we were doing and helped us greatly, however, with all the expenses run thru OSC, and some funds being provided to other organizations, we were hurting the giving/expense ratio of OSC – which they have worked very hard to keep at over 90% return to vets for all giving they receive. For this and other reasons in late 2015 we started Operation Patriot Support (OPs).  We received our approval for 501c3 status in 2016 and have continued the Florida Fun Shoot and our new Evening With Heroes events to fund our assistance programs.   As OPs we continue to support OSC, Black Dagger, and other veteran support organizations, such as Southeastern Guide Dog’s Paws for Patriots, and Support the Troops.  We also provide specific support to other individual veterans.